13C – Beyond the benefits: reckoning with the full impact of international education
Abstract:
International education is a powerful force for connection, growth, and global understanding — and the sector is at its
best when it reflects honestly on both its contributions and its responsibilities.
This session brings together CANIE Oceania Leadership (Climate Action Network for International Educators) for an
interactive café-style conversation exploring the full picture of international education’s impact.
The session invites participants to move beyond passive listening and into genuine dialogue — mapping the
transformative outcomes international education makes possible alongside the environmental, cultural, and ethical
dimensions the sector is increasingly called to address.
Together, participants will explore what it looks like to move toward models that are sustainable, intercultural, and
genuinely beneficial — for students, institutions, communities, and the planet — and leave with practical insights and
shared momentum for what comes next.
Learning objectives:
Participants will:
Understand the dual nature of international education’s impact — its genuine benefits and its documented harms
Explore how sustainability, intercultural capability, and ethical accountability can be embedded across institutional
practice
Examine the environmental footprint of international education and practical frameworks for reducing it
Identify how cultural identity and lived experience can be centred — rather than commodified — within international
education models
Learn from cross-organisational collaboration as a model for driving sector-wide change
Gain actionable insights for moving their institutions toward approaches that do good without doing harm
Target audience:
International education practitioners and institutional leaders
Sustainability officers and environmental strategy leads
Curriculum designers and intercultural learning specialists
Student experience, wellbeing, learning abroad and student services teams
Government, policy, and peak body representatives